The area of silicon photonics has seen remarkable advancements in recent years. Subwavelength silicon nanostructures, such as photonic crystals and high-index-contrast photonic integrated circuits, offer the opportunity to fundamentally manipulate the propagation of light. The inherent ease of integration of a silicon photonics platform with complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor foundries also offers improved opportunities to reduce costs.
Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) is a phenomenon by which optical amplification can be performed. More particularly, it is an inelastic two-photon process, where a signal photon interacts with a pump photon to produce another signal photon and an excited state in a host material. For excited crystal silicon, longitudinal optical (LO) and transversal optical TO excited states (phonons) are formed. The SRS caused by the interaction of photons with the phonons of silicon produces Stokes and anti-Stokes light. The strongest Stokes peak arises from the single first order Raman-phonon at the center of the Brillouin zone. The generation of the Stokes photons can be understood classically as a third order nonlinear effect. Although significant gains in silicon photonics have been realized, improved mechanisms for performing SRS are desired.